Don’t Tell Me to Have, but to Do It! The Role of Luxury Desirability Motives in Reducing Counterfeiting Schadenfreude

Khan Sameeullah (), Fazili Asif Iqbal and Bashir Irfan
Additional contact information
Khan Sameeullah: 121739 Alliance University Alliance School of Business , Bangalore, India
Fazili Asif Iqbal: Islamic University of Science and Technology, Awantipora, India
Bashir Irfan: Islamic University of Science and Technology, Awantipora, India

Review of Marketing Science, 2024, vol. 22, issue 1, 193-217

Abstract: This paper postulates that consumers’ desire for doing-luxury – pursuing luxury with the intention of acquiring a life experience (vs. having-luxury) – pursuing luxury with the intention of acquiring a material good reduces counterfeiting schadenfreude – consumers’ feelings of pleasure from the losses of luxury brands due to counterfeiting. Two experiments employed various methods of invoking doing-luxury (vs. having-luxury) – actual product exposure and brand positioning to test the predicted framework. The results demonstrate that doing-luxury (vs. having-luxury) leads to a lower counterfeiting schadenfreude; an effect explained by the lower perceived similarity. This research makes an important contribution to the counterfeiting and experiential marketing literature by demonstrating the role of brand positioning in reducing a critical counterfeit-related social emotion. The results also validate the relevance of the intentions-based distinction of experiential versus material purchases in predicting counterfeiting schadenfreude. To reduce counterfeiting schadenfreude, luxury brands must signal an ephemeral image focusing on moments of luxury rather than functions of luxury. In addition, ad appeals must invoke sensory elements, feelings, emotions, imagination, and mental stimulation rather than the hard facts about the products per se.

Keywords: schadenfreude; counterfeit luxury brands; luxury brands; experiential luxury; perceived similarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/roms-2024-0001 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:revmkt:v:22:y:2024:i:1:p:193-217:n:1008

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/roms/html

DOI: 10.1515/roms-2024-0001

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Marketing Science is currently edited by Ram C. Rao

More articles in Review of Marketing Science from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().